The invention relates to a method for emulating a non-bond-out version of a microcontroller that has standard port, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,574,852 assigned to the same assignee as in this application, which patent is hereby incorporated by reference. At present, the in-circuit emulation of many microcontrollers, such as, but not being limited, to use with the well-known 80C51 microcontroller, requires the presence of at least two 8-bit IO-ports. One port, usually port P0, is then used as a multiplexed 8 bit low address/data bus, whereas the another one, normally port P2, provides the high bits of the 16 bit address space. Since both of these ports therewith will have lost their standard IO-facility, this IO facility must be reconstructed externally from the chip. The data that is necessary for the P0, P2 reconstruction is then supplied in multiplexed fashion via the P0, P2 lines. This needs to be done only in emulation mode, because in normal mode the port lines operate in a manner that has been defined specifically for the microcontroller in question. Further, restricting the operation to 8-bit memory addresses would be out of the question. For many microcontroller applications that need only limited IO, the cost of two ports has been found excessive.